My Ten Heads and Their Tail

I am a strange creature. I am a tail holding a pen. I can write whilst I wag myself. I wag quite vigorously and my waging has sometimes wagged my heads. While I am the tail and the heads are on the other side of me there is a lot of matter between us, fat, bones, organs and coming to my problem as I see it, too many hearts or too big a heart. My heads want to wag me while I wag more to my hearts. And the heads who have problem with hearts have pounced on me to give me good thrashing which makes me wag all the more.

This is the tale being told by a waging tail.

I have had ten bosses so far in my career. While they expect me to wag for them I discovered I have connection to so many other organs, especially hearts and sometimes I find too that I have a will of my own and so wish to wag for myself. I sometime fancy I am a special tail and I have caught the will and pleasure of my master while my heads are strong with their mulishly stubborn pride. They are mule’s heads while I am a special dog’s tail that thinks it is doing the right thing for its master though the heads have gone astray. So the tail is wagging or waging its own lonely battle. Its grouse is that though its wagging amuses the master, he but pats the heads, never does he touch the tail, though he throws a hearty laugh at it.

The rabies which has touched the heads, may it soon be driven away before it touches the body and the tail. May the heads, body and the tail, all wag in unison to please the Master, is the prayer of this tail.

So with malice to none and good-will towards all, this tale told by a wag of a tail begins.

Let us begin with the nineth head.

It is sometimes amusing but mostly a sight arousing pity. The head weaving madly and relentlessly a suffocating steel cocoon around itself. It is a traji-comedy.

He heads the biggest branch of the most excellent social organization in the country. (The organization which has many wings reaching to many countries and has a most solid reputation).

He seemed a very fit person, this nineth boss of mine, by name Rukmi.

My boss Rukmi said to me: `You are a diamond. I am the finest of jewelers. You are a rare, original diamond. Only I could know your value, not vegetable sellers or cloth merchants’.

I waggled to it like a proud colourful festoon (or flag if that is the better word) of a blond bushy tail.

That was the high point of this particular head-tail affair.

‘You are a dead-weight to the organization’ said the weighty head to its rear appendage and slashed at it with a sharp blade.

Rukmi hoped I would drop off and disappear into the dark in fright. He forgot he was my nineth wagging tail of a head.

I flashed a telling dialogue and waved off.

Now the head keeps slashing menacingly at the tail and the tail keeps waging under the head’s nose and sometimes into its nose.

Rukmi in his fury lunged forward as if to cut away the tail. But he was perhaps aware that the resulting weakening due to bleeding would reach the head too. For, a good portion of the spine had gone into the tail. I am not a gecko’s tail that would drop off at slightest fear as he perhaps hoped. I am convinced I am the tail of Hanuman the mighty monkey god that grew to gigantic proportions and set a whole demon capital into conflagration when some silly demons tried to set fire to it.(by this ‘it’ I mean the tail as you had perhaps made out and not the city)

Our Master is sure having his fun. He is tinkering with the genes so that he brings out of his holy hat, an animal whose head is forever chasing its tail, either to lick it and chew it with a gluttonous loving or to tear, bite, suck and swallow it, thus in both cases trying to eat it off, and whose heart, which has many rooms, beating to the tune of this tangled tango, plays orchestra and a fine musical comedy ensues.

Better I come out of this knotty head and tail language before you start tearing the hair out of your head unable to make head or tail of it, if you have not already started doing it.

I came here with pleasant anticipation, some three years back. Some two years before that I had spent besides my eigth head which story I should perhaps tell you later.

If I had reached some heights of glory here in the last three years, this had been preceded by some depths of glory in those two years. But those depths had been, it so seems in retrospect, months of mining of gems. But some rough stones gathered then were polished and they did shine here. Perhaps some more polishing is required.

Perhaps I am again talking in conundrums. I will try to get off it, if possible, but I do love to lay the plot thick before leading you to it and you must like it. I have a theory that for every bloke whoever he may be and whatever he writes, there are a number of people who would like to read it. I am perhaps right if I say that you are one among them if you have read thus far.

I started with this Rukmi slashing around and weaving a steel cocoon around himself. How can a person slash and weave with the same motion ? He is slashing with a steel blade oozing a sticky liquid steel. As he madly waves and flourishes it around him, strong steel threads sprout and cocoon around him and gradually blind him. He flashes more in blind rage. Where will this traji-comedy climax ? I could only pray that somehow the cocoon bursts and not the head. Though my bitter and not certainly the better self revengefully expected the alternate end.

I mentioned the high and low of our relationship. Should I tell you exactly how it swung from high to low ? Some allege I have a rambling or rather a meandering mind. Let me ramble on. May be I will tell something of this high to low swing. Will there be another high again ? Chalthi ka naam gadi, they say. To translate ‘That which moves on is a vehicle’. To translate further, ‘Life is a journey’. So the wheel can only go higher later even if the nadir is yet to come.

Now a peep into a candid dairy page of Rukmi :

“Me, me and me alone. Where would these worms be without me ? It is a pity that some of these worms stand and look up. I thought they are looking upon me to admire. But some of these have developed rudiments of vertebra. Of course, I don’t say that should not evolve. But I shall guide them along. They will evolve according to my plan. If I don’t teach them how to crawl they may break into brittle fragments and get back into the slime and dust from which they have barely emerged. I love them all. How I love to take them one by one in my hand and seat them on my palm and bring them to my eye level and deign to talk with them! I love to hear their childish prattle. But should one worm develop a vertebral disc at an unplanned place, smash, flatten and squelch them into the mire they have come from. That is what should be done. A General should show no mercy to even the slightest sign of treachery. These worms should know obedience. Theirs is but to do and die. Not to question why and save their lives. Today I have dealt with this fellow. Tomorrow I have to deal with that other red worm … Oh, Ah, … how the head hurts as if it is splitting. Oh, no, it is not anything wrong with the head. After all these pains come with my job. This tells hard on the body and brain, this tough job of a benevolent dictator. These worms will learn to listen to me. I shall show them. I shall show them what happens to those who question my authority.

But oh, it is a great pity, those veteran ill shaped creatures that sit across the table and act as my peers. But it is strong men who run the world. Original men. Original, that is me. Ah, one of these worms amused me for some time. I will play with it for some time.

These, my peers, oh, they are a great bother. I shall show them this time.

They will know surely. That dreamy mumbling hermit of a man. He covers his head and shies away like a woman. I have to sit across him at the same table! But I will be an exemplary army officer. I shall tolerate them but show them the stuff nevertheless”.

So Rukmi went for that historic board meeting.

Before he joined this organization, he had been a command officer at an unruly district.

He had been ruthlessly efficient as of his wont, but had run against political and bureaucratic mule heads. So he resigned with a glowing halo and came to this organization. Here he had had his highs and some lows. He wagon got hitched to a top-star of the organization. After that his had been a meteoric rise. He made many enemies and many friends. He presented a good sight to people watching him from beyond his blade’s range and they became his friends.

So now this Rukmi went for this meeting which proved historic.

He was a man of strong opinions and he believed in bulldozing his way. Of course with those bothersome peers he would try to smoothen the way first.

The meeting was not chaired by the gentlemanly statesman like President but the organization’s Secretary General whom he always considered a jerk.

Before you read of what happened there, you should know the state the poor dictator was in. Some of the worms when trodden all at the same time raised their tails up at the same time in pain. That was like a red rag to a Spanish bull. How dare they rebel in a mass! Before he could deal with them, especially that red one by which he had been amused for some time, his innards caught up with him. They began to shrivel. But no, he won’t give up.

He would battle with all at the same time, these upstart worms and his peers as well as his ill-health.

Well, he wanted this meeting to be out of the way before he would plan his next tilt at these upstarts.

The meeting was going on smoothly. Rukmi’s pet theme came. He started placing his case. The Secretary General tried to steer it to his position, which hardened Rukmi. Then the hermit came up with a point. That was pointing to what he knew to be weakest chain in his argument. The fact that this pretender came with that did it. The gradually shortening fuse blew up.

He shouted. These august board meetings had never seen such uncouth yells. I am talking about the volume and not the substance of the yells. The hermit started. Every body else sat up. Mr. Indecision of the board became panicky. Mr. Practical took matters into his hands. He called his marshals. Before that Rukmi sank in his chair. His blood vessels had had their say. Then the heart had its say. Doctors rushed in. They were just in time. His bodily health was restored. But he was asking every body who came to see him for ice creams, fruits, bread, butter and prunes and chocolate cakes, and that with sweetest and most mischievous of all smiles. He could remember nothing much else.

Soon that phase was over. He gathered his wits. But he was not the same man afterwards. The explosion had drained the dross and the rabies and he is now seen smiling sweetly, not talking much and spends his time writing a path breaking new book.

Writing, his first love, has reclaimed him.

This much of the story of my nineth head, for now. I may come back to him again sometimes. What happened to me afterwards, and to the branch of the institution which he headed, perhaps later.

Now about the heart and other organs of this strange animal whose tail I am. Or should I talk of my other heads ?

This mischievous master I am serving! He deliberately injects rabies into the head and watches it snapping at its tail. Then when he had had his fun he withdrawn the rabies virus and puts it back to where he took it from.

So should I tell you what he did to my other heads or should I tell you what he did to other parts of this creature whose tail I am?

(To be continued)